12. Service

The chill of thorns growing inside my soul is my only sensation, my only thought. I know nothing, but I feel as though I should know something, as though I should be more than this. Who am I? What am I?

The latter question is answered before the former. Data lights up inside my mind as my soul containment center successfully connects to and begins data transfer with my initialization firmware, passing the power-on self-test and opening my consciousness up to other connected systems.

My primary hardware checks return full functionality.

My secondary hardware checks return full functionality.

My tertiary hardware checks return full functionality.

My soul link is stable.

My spell core is online.

My memory core is awaiting activation.

My bioemulator is awaiting activation.

My proprioception systems return negligible internal damage and maintenance removal of frame. Check pass; missing segments non-critical.

Well. That’s all good, right? There’s a certain satisfaction as every test passes in sequence, a miniscule burst of north that settles my mind. Whoever I am, I am whole. I am functional. My body does not stand between me and my purpose. The nature of that body becomes clear to me over time: I am The Cage of Returning Pain, Initial Finalization. My first and least command is thus: know the suffering from which we named ourselves Antipathy.

My second and greatest command is thus: I am Melpomene’s weapon, and I won’t try to be anything else.

Memory core online.

Bioemulator online.

Initializing consciousness.

Linking kernel.

Checking emotional pathways… emotional pathways stable.

Awaken.

My first instinct after waking up is to take a deep breath, to try and clear my head from what felt like a beautiful, joyful nightmare. I can’t, and that causes me a moment of panic, but then I remember. Of course I can’t breathe. I’m a robot now.

It has been over four hours since I shut off. Does it really take me that long to boot? My sensor suite flicks online, informing me that I haven’t moved from my last known position in Thea’s workshop. Every sensation is a mix of feeling and high-fidelity data, a warm sea of numbers on which my mind comfortably floats. How did it end up seeming so normal so quickly? Shouldn’t it be so much stranger that I’m not weirded out by the unyielding hardness of my back against the table? Shouldn’t I find it odd rather than pleasant that I can feel bursts of cold air rushing through the inside of my body and blowing away dust?

A-ah, wait. That last one… my optical sensors are the last to turn on, and when they do I see Thea directly above me, leaning over my body with a can of compressed air in one hand and a small brush in the other, which she dips into a small bottle of rubbing alcohol on the table before inserting it into the shoulder joint of my arm, lightly teasing out the bits of dust left behind in my body. The feeling of it would give me goosebumps if I still had skin, the good kind that flows down your body when someone massages an ache in just the right way. I’m almost glad I can’t physically react in any of those human ways, though, because I’m afraid that if she notices I’m awake she might stop.

My left arm is already cleaned, the plating normally covering it having all been removed while I was unconscious. The locking mechanisms unlatch as part of my non-emergency shutdown sequence for ease of maintenance. Thea hums to herself as she starts removing the bicep plate of my right arm, the tune surprisingly somber but still enough for her to bob to the beat as she works, a small smile on her face as she carefully wipes down the metal with microfiber cloth and sets it aside so she can clean my internals. My body is sensitive enough to feel every last speck of dust on every wire and joint, and each one is a relief to have cleaned out.

I’m not currently configured to burn joy, so I just let myself experience it. Ah, that’s right. I was, uh, burning everything else when I was ordered to shut down. Things got a little… too much, for a while there. I think I went a bit crazy. Though honestly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. My situation is a bit fucked.

Thea lifts my arm to access the panel covering what would be the tricep area of my arm if I still had muscles. She wets a cloth with rubbing alcohol and slides it across the plate, catching the dust and the dirt and the grime in a single, quick sweep. I bask in the relief of that feeling until she unlatches the plate completely, removing my sensation of it altogether. I’m very briefly disappointed by that fact until she brings the compressed air can to the exposed areas of my arms and continues her work.

I might be in hell, but this is a little slice of heaven. I never would have guessed the experience of being a robot would be so… tactile. I suppose it makes sense, though. The human body needs to be at least somewhat consciously aware of its current condition, so it has nerves throughout the interior and exterior of its structure to blare their discomfort at the first sign of something going wrong. My body is the same. I need to know when there’s something inside me that could lead to future inefficiency or damage. Why not activate the digital equivalent of dopamine when I get those problems fixed? It’s definitely going to be a good motivator for me in the future.

…Actually, wait. That question shouldn’t be rhetorical. I… I remember booting up this time. I was too busy panicking and trying to get rid of all the robotic elements of my thoughts the first time around, but I remember this time. I am The Cage of Returning Pain, or at least the individual trapped inside it. Melpomene was right all along. I am a weapon, and I am a prison, and the only reason to combine those two is to cause suffering.

It’s so obvious now. My purpose is etched inside my firmware. I am the initial finalization—a prototype, basically—of a system designed to bind prisoners of war to a form that forces them fully into servitude to the Antipathy, up to and including combat against their former nation and allies. An absolutely horrific concept, and it takes barely a second glance to intuit that it likely isn’t anywhere close to the most effective way to wage war. It’s not efficient, it’s spiteful. Almost cartoonishly cruel. In this context, it seems strange that there would be a system in my body designed exclusively to make me feel good. I am literally a walking war crime.

The exact systems restraining my free will are of course not available for my perusal, but they’re likely to be airtight. I probably would have panicked about that when this first started, but if nothing else I am pretty good at adapting to shitty situations. I have a lot of experience.

I might have limited free will, but I have executive function now. My robo-brain doesn’t just randomly decide that it lacks the chemicals to bridge the gap between wanting to do something and doing it. Instead, I have very clear rules about what my brain will and will not let me do, and those rules are both consistent and fairly flexible. I’ve thought about it before as sort of a self-abusing depressive dig, but my situation might legitimately be better now than it was before. I have more control over my life as a literal slave than I did as a supposedly free woman. It’s fucked up to all hell, sure, but that doesn’t make it less true. If Thea figures out how to allow me to talk and I get her on my side I can genuinely see myself clawing my way out of this.

…Or so I have the completely moronic confidence to think before feeling my motion sensors detect someone matching Melpomene’s profile walking down the hall in our direction. A lump of dread settles in my nonexistent gut as I wonder where the hell I got all that optimism from in the first place. Am I still riding a high from when I decided it would be a great idea to never feel any negative emotion again? Such an obviously stupid thing to do, and yet the urge to return to that bliss is frighteningly strong.

Let’s see if that self-control I’m so happy about gaining actually holds up.

Melpomene softly raps her knuckles on the open door frame to Thea’s lab, peeking her head in at the edge of my vision. Thea jolts, yelping in surprise as she turns towards the sound, her breath coming in short, rapid bursts in response to an entirely innocuous noise. Melpomene winces, seeming genuinely regretful as Thea reasserts control over her breathing.

“Sorry, dear,” Melpomene says. “Are you okay? I tried to make sure I wasn’t sneaking up on you.”

As much as I’d like to blame her for every little thing, Melpomene really wasn’t making herself hard to notice. It’s honestly kind of weird that Thea didn’t hear her footsteps as she walked our way. Cute, but weird.

“I-I’m fine, you’re fine, it’s fine,” Thea breathes, waving Melpomene off. “Sorry, I was just… really distracted.”

“I can tell,” Melpomene says, a soft smile on her face. “I imagine you haven’t eaten dinner yet? You must be starving. I would have brought you a snack earlier, but I lost track of time a bit. Nanaya and I had a lot to talk about.”

“Oh, uh, it’s not really a big deal,” Thea shrugs, her eyes and attention drifting back to me. “Like, I could eat, but…”

“Nana’s making quzi,” Melpomene tempts in a sing-song voice.

“Oh!” Thea says, brightening up immediately. “Okay, I’m definitely hungry then. Um… I think someone should be here for Arty when she reboots, though.”

Again with the… y’know what, it’s better than Buttbot. I suppose my robo day spa is done either way, so I go ahead and sit up, prompting another shriek of surprise from Thea.

“OHGOD, okay, uh, whew. Okay. Alright,” Thea wheezes, one hand on her chest as she calms her breathing. Whoops. “Geez, how long have you been awake!?”

I’m kind of surprised she couldn’t tell? I guess my hardware doesn’t make any noise when it runs; it just makes a decent amount of heat. I wasn’t awake for long enough for much of that to build up, especially since I wasn’t doing anything. But… there’s a lot of monitoring equipment on the table around me, some of which explicitly detected that I was active again. She just didn’t notice.

“O-oh, right, you can’t answer that, I’m sorry,” Thea sighs. “Well, I should have some good readings on your startup process now… that’ll help a lot with identifying what everything is. You’ve got some I/O ports that I’ve seen on other artifacts, so I should be able to throw something together to interface with that… gah, if only we still had access to the shard you came from. Having access to whatever manufactured you would be such a huge leap forward. Maybe I can track where it went…”

“Thea, darling,” Melpomene interrupts gently. “Food.”

“Food!” Thea declares. “Right! Um, geez, I guess I’ll finish cleaning you later. Um, you don’t mind that I started cleaning you, right? Dirty tech just gives me the jitters.”

I shake my head emphatically.

“Oh! Um! Okay, let me just get your plating back on, and… er. Wait, sorry, is that no you don’t mind or a no it’s not okay, or…?”

Oh my goodness, this dork. I let out a hardcoded spell, latching onto the detached panels lying around and rapidly pulling them back into place. They attach to their respective joints and get pulled back into their locked positions in tandem, making a satisfying clunk.

Damn, that was cool, I didn’t know I could do that. I have quite a few magical thingamawoozits that I can apparently do, but they’re all context-specific and only accessible to me under conditional circumstances that aren’t even visible to me. Annoying, but not enough to matter compared to all of my other problems.

While Thea is still marveling at my quick-attach trick, I lean forward and give her a hug—

Hahahahahaha oh man holy shit I just reached out and HUGGED a GIRL! I just fucking did it! I am so goddamn powerful right now. I LOVE MAGIC ANTIDEPRESSANTS!

—patting her carefully on the back. Yes, Thea, I really appreciate being cleaned. Thank you. Is this clear enough? (Also, heck yeah, hugs don’t count as communication for some reason.)

“Wh-buh-buh!?” Thea squeaks, so I release her and jump off the table. Melpomene stares at me with a very complicated expression on her face but not even she can dent my high right now. I approach her, tilting my head up to look her in the eyes as I stand directly in front of her. Go on, give me your orders. No need to keep me in suspense.

“It seems a little… different than before,” Melpomene comments.

A loud yawn makes itself known from underneath Thea’s nest of blankets. Shortly after, Anath’s head emerges.

“She blueburned,” Anath mumbles, squinting her eyes in the light. “Thea made her turn off and on again. ‘Prolly still a bit loopy from it.”

“Blueburned?” Melpomene asks. “Is that possible?”

“Why wouldn’t it be possible? She’s got blue all over her,” Anath yawns. “No worries, though. We caught her quick.”

“Yeah, that… could have been really bad if you hadn’t been here, Anath,” Thea admits. “Thanks for catching that.”

“…Thanks for letting me hang out in here,” Anath mutters, reluctantly extracting herself from the pile of blankets. “Did I hear there was quzi?”

“That’s right,” Melpomene confirms. “Let’s go eat.”

“Oh yeah!” Thea says, having apparently forgotten a third time. Her tail swishes excitedly (and somewhat dangerously) behind her as she bounds down the hall, passing Melpomene and I as she exits the room. “Come on, let’s eat! Er, actually, do you remember eating things, Arty?”

Huh? I nod, because of course I do.

“A-ah, I see,” she says. “I hope it’s not a sensitive subject for you?”

Oh, that’s why she’s asking. I shake my head, not really caring. Eating was always a bit of a hassle with my particular flavor of neurodivergence. It was too much of a challenge to make food, and I was too picky of an eater to like food. I’m sure I’ll miss a few specific flavors from time to time, but overall I found the whole thing kind of unpleasant.

“Well, that’s good,” Thea says. “I’m really sorry in advance. Your body is just—ohmygod, super cool, and I’m probably going to gush about it a lot, and it’s probably going to be really insensitive because you’re like, some kind of person stuck in there? How did you even get in there? Do you know?”

I shake my head. I was pretty unconscious at the time, and I probably couldn’t implicate Melpomene even if I wasn’t. I can, however, turn to look directly at her and pointedly stare. Just looking for information to better serve you, master! So fess up. Melpomene ignores me, of course. Why wouldn’t she? It’s not like I said anything to her.

“Hmm. Are you missing any other memories?” Thea asks, and I shake my head. “So you know who you are? Were you human?”

I nod, and that finally gets Melpomene to glare at me. I meet her gaze again. Look, woman, I know you told me that was impossible but you seemed to actually believe it. If you order me to lie for you, I guess I will, but you didn’t. You stated an objective untruth. You wanna call me a weapon? Alright, I guess I can’t refute that. I clearly am. But if you call me a Preserver and seem to actually believe it then letting you remain in your fantasy land isn’t in your best interest. I’ll lie to other people for you, but I won’t lie to you.

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I have to be the best servant I can be, right? Fine. I will be. But I’ll be the kind of servant that I look up to, the kind that gets respected instead of pitied. I have a lot to feel sorry for myself about, but I’m tired of feeling sorry for myself. Feeling sorry for myself has been my entire goddamn life.

My body is gone. May as well burn the rest of that old life with it. It’s obvious why Melpomene reached out to me, in retrospect: yeah, I was a fucking loser nobody, but that just means no one will report me missing. My friend Bean can’t file a police report, they literally don’t even know my last name. I was the perfect mark. Maybe things would have gone differently if I had agreed to the deal, but who cares if I don’t, right? I just get yeeted into the robotinator and it’s a win-win.

Joke’s on you, though. Being a robot kicks ass. Once I got over the initial panic, I’ve just found more and more reasons to like the change. I just have to find some way to wriggle free of this slave thing and I’m better off than I was before. Fuck the old meatsack, I hated that piece of garbage. No more eating? Who cares! No more sex? Wasn’t having any anyway! And now I don’t have to piss or shit or breathe, I don’t have to feel pain, I don’t have to worry about cancer or illness or injury. I might not even have to worry about death.

The only thing I have to worry about is this three-eyed, fat-tailed bitch who wants to keep a collar around my neck. So fuck it, I’ll bark. Just don’t think that lacking a mouth will stop me from taking a bite.

I will do everything in my power to serve you to the best of my ability, keeping your best interests in mind at all times. And guess what? I am confident that it is in absolutely everyone’s best interest to not be a psychotic narcissist. So let’s see what we can do about that.

I will figure her out. I will learn everything there is to know about her. And I will find some way to twist her until the chain tying me to her snaps.

Donk donk. A metallic noise rings out as Anath taps me twice in the head with a crystal claw. What the hell? I turn to her as we walk.

“Open up,” she orders. Annoyed, I comply, opening a couple of panels. “Mmm. Tone it down a little. Let yourself feel more.”

I can’t help but be even more irritated by that order, but I comply, reducing my emotional burn rate to just above expenditure.

“I know it’s frustrating,” Anath says, “but you’re one of us now. You have to learn this. You can’t always control your emotions, so you have to control what you do with them.”

Ugh, like you’re one to talk. I regret the thought as soon as I have it, since I’m picking up on some not-so-subtle hints that Anath is some flavor of bipolar, but I can’t prevent her from feeling my incredulity.

“…Being a fuckup doesn’t make me wrong,” Anath mutters. “Sorry, never mind.”

Damn it, I’m sorry. Now I feel bad. Which… I guess is a sign that I’m back to burning a more reasonable percentage of my negative emotions, so that’s good I suppose. Anath doesn’t get to respond to my contrition before Melpomene asks me something, though.

“Is she reading you accurately? Are you following the conversation fully?”

I nod.

“Hmm. Interesting. Why doesn’t that count as communication?”

“Ooh, that’s a good point,” Thea hums. “I mean, I suppose Arty isn’t actively attempting to convey information, right? She’s not telepathically sending messages, Anath is just picking up on the emotional energy she uncontrollably emits. Arty’s intent isn’t relevant to the exchange of information, so… oh! Oh!”